We had 19 Descenders on our Lake Wohford Ride yesterday. New riders, Jay and Paul have joined the usual gang of riders at the Mall. Eric had an unfortunate flat in the first few miles. He went home, grabbed a new wheel and rejoined us on the Lilac – impressive commitment to the ride, Eric!

We rode easy through Escondido, almost caught by Ranchos who were heading towards Camp Pendleton. On Lake Wohford climb, Rick, Matt, Larry and I set a hard pace – paced by Rick, Larry and I managed to get almost 350 Watts for 10 minutes. I want to know what sort of power Rick can produce. We exchanged some strong pulls towards and down Woods Valley, Matt easily taking the sprint. Rick made a strong effort on the climb to the top of Couser, while the rest of us took it easy. On the Couser descent I was a student in Matt’s descending clinic, trying to hold onto his wheel.
We grabbed some water at the fruit stand at 76 and climbed back up to Lilac on Old Hwy 395.
On Lilac Matt went for solo breakaway by accelerating on Ararat Hill, and Larry and I gave chase. We finally caught Matt and the three of us worked together to hold off the closing group lead by Rick, Steve and others. We just barely survived to Camino Del Rey turn.
This is where we picked up Eric, and did some nice rotations to our next rest stop at the Market on Old Hwy. We called a neutralized zone for Champaign room – at the top of which we split up a bit, with some continuing straight through Centre City Pkwy, others going through Jesmond Dene. I was in the sweeper group of 5 in the back – despite going slowly, we took a shortcut through Ash St. and actually got back before the group at the front that went back through Citrus.
60ish miles with 5K ft of climbing for most of us, but Voris who rode from/to home got 85, and Claus got in 106 miles, wow!